Patricia Lockwood on Possession
Patricia Lockwood chooses A.S. Byatt’s Possession, a much-loved book that gave Lockwood ‘permission’ to pursue her literary passion: ‘it was not a waste of time, not a waste of life, to read’.
Shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 2021. Patricia Lockwood’s sincere and delightfully profane love letter to the infinite scroll, and a meditation on love, language and human connection.
A social media guru travels the world, her entire existence overwhelmed by the internet or what she terms ‘the portal’. ‘Are we in hell?’ The people of the portal ask themselves. ‘Are we all just going to keep doing this until we die?’ Two urgent texts from her mother pierce the guru’s bubble. As real life collides with the absurdity of the portal, she confronts a world that seems to suggest there is goodness, empathy and justice in the universe - and a deluge of evidence to the contrary.
Patricia Lockwood
About the Author
Patricia Lockwood is an American poet, novelist and essayist who was born in a trailer in Indiana and raised 'in all the worst cities of the Midwest'.The internet – in the form of social media, at least – is much more like fiction than it is anything else
Watch videos
Listen to an extract from No One Is Talking About This
Kristen Sieh brings No One is Talking About This to life in the audiobook.
Lockwood’s genius for irony is matched by the radiance of her reverence, when she lets it show
The road to the Booker
Lockwood_ Author Timeline_6 from Jen on Vimeo.
